Devil's Business Read online

  “Again, sorry about them,” Sanford said. “But in my line, good security is worth its weight.”

  “And what is your line, exactly?” Jack said.

  Sanford stopped at a door with a keypad and punched in a long sequence. “I told you,” he said. “I’m a collector.”

  The door revealed a set of stairs leading down, cut directly into the stone beneath the mansion. “Wine cellar,” Sanford said. “This house was one of the first built on this stretch of Sunset. Doug Fairbanks lived here at one point. Very nice address.”

  “If you want a round of applause,” Jack said, “I’ll try to muster it up.”

  Sanford flipped a big old-fashioned circuit, the kind used to fry a bloke in an electric chair. “I started collecting when I was twelve,” he said. “I was a dumb kid from Ohio, and a neighbor down the street died. My friends and I went poking around the yard sale, and I found a little box, a box full of bones.

  “She was a witch,” Sanford continued, as lights flickered on, bulbs strung along the length of the stairs, “and they were children’s knucklebones.”

  Another door was set into the rock at the bottom of the stairs, brand new brushed steel, locked with a keypad and a submarine-hatch wheel. “I don’t have much in the way of my own talents,” Sanford said. “But I knew those bones had power, and I wanted it. I started looking for more, going out for weeks at a time in this old rusted-out pickup, all over the Midwest, poking through barns, pawing through junk shops, talking my way into dying men’s bedrooms and dark secrets.”

  Sanford punched in another code and spun the hatch open. “This is my life’s work. Not many people ever see it.”

  The small room under the rock was crammed stiflingly full, wooden shelves running floor to ceiling, with a glass display case filling the center. A small reading table, chair, and lamp were shoved into a corner. Rather than the somber atmosphere of a museum, or the crammed comfort of Jack’s own flat, this place was full and filthy, dust piled inches thick on top of the cases, the scent of closed-up air and human sweat wafting in Jack’s face. He’d never been so reminded of a troll cave in his life.

  Sanford hit another switch and lights bloomed from hidden alcoves. “What do you think?”

  Jack sneezed. “Your maid’s not doing a bang-up job, is she?”

  Sanford spread his hands. “Los Angeles is a nexus of power, Jack. It’s why when the lines were drawn, neither side claimed it. Nobody wanted to constantly defend their territory, so it became neutral ground. It draws these objects in like a tornado, and people, too. Los Angeles has serial killers and mass murderers like some cities have coffee shops and sports teams. I find them where I can, the relics and the memorabilia, and I keep them safe.” He sat at the desk and pulled a red cloth book to him. “Do you know the name Basil Locke?”

  Jack examined the crammed shelves. Most of the objects whispered against his sight, and a few screamed. Sanford might be full of shit, but he was right about his collection. There was power here, bad mojo, enough of it to light up the Sunset Strip. “No,” he said. “Should I?”

  “Movie star in the 1930s, mostly B pictures, crime stuff and screwball comedies,” said Sanford. “He never caught on the way Grant and Gable did. Birth name was Brian Chernik. Russian Jew, raised in England, fell in with a bad crowd.” Sanford shoved the book across the table. “Our old boy Basil kept a grimoire, detailing all his attempts to summon and control the forces of Hell.”

  “Demons,” Jack said. Many of the things Sanford had collected seemed innocuous—costume jewelry, photographs of crime scenes and autopsies, one bloodstained woman’s pump—but they all vibrated, malignancy and terror bleeding through from the Black. The man knew the power of objects that had been in close proximity to death. “I’m guessing that ended well for him.”

  “Better than you could’ve imagined,” said Sanford. “Locke found something else down there, something that could make a demon scream.”

  Belial had certainly looked like he was pissing in his shorts. Jack left the shelves of bloody-minded objects and turned to Sanford. “All right,” he said. “You got my attention.”

  “Hell wasn’t always the place for the Named and their legions,” Sanford said. “There were other things, older things. You’ve seen them.”

  “I wouldn’t call brushing elbows with Nergal seeing,” Jack said. “In fact, I’d die happy if I never saw anything like him ever again.”

  “The demons overthrew their makers, as is the way of all things,” Sanford said. “They couldn’t kill them, so they locked them away with the old gods. One slipped out here and there, and the demons hunted them and put them back—nothing anyone without a talent would notice as unusual. Wars and nuclear bombs and that sort of thing as cover.” He stroked the cover of the red book. “But your little stunt with Nergal cracked the door open, and now they’re out. They’re all out. Elvis has left the building.” He tapped the page. “Basil Locke was the one who first spoke to them, who realized that things other than demons could be called up from Hell.”

  Jack looked at the scribbling and the diagrams contained in the loose pages of the red book, all of it with the distinct, manic edge of the deranged. He’d seen enough psychotic scribbling, both from his mother while she was on pills and from various mages who’d dipped a bit too deep into the pool of hallucinations and trance magic, to recognize crazy when he read it.

  “How do I know this isn’t complete shit?” he asked Sanford. “And furthermore, what’s it got to do with me and Belial?”

  “Belial thinks he can lock a lock that’s already been broken,” said Sanford. “He thinks if he’s the one to put this right by making you his hunting dog, he’ll move up the ladder in Hell. But he’s afraid of them, too, and we can use that.” He touched the sigil. “If we can get them on our side, Belial will never bother you or your wife again.”

  “She’s not my wife,” Jack said reflexively. Sanford had to be munching on insanity for breakfast and shitting it out to think he could toe up to Belial using some nebulous spell to control the demon’s boogeyman.

  “My mistake,” Sanford said. “But think of your child, at least. You really think Belial, or any other demon with ambitions, is going to let the child of the crow-mage grow up in peace?”

  Jack shook his head. “I’ve already got that covered,” he said. Sanford was tanned and trustworthy, his graying hair and straight white grin making him appear as your kind uncle, to whom you could tell anything. Worse than a demon, because he was only a man, and still trying to cut a deal with things ten times worse than the population of the Pit. “My deal’s with Belial, mate,” he said. “Not with you.”

  “Come on,” Sanford said. “I’m giving you the chance to slip this yoke once and for all. To never worry again about a demon troubling you and yours.”

  “I get that, yeah, and it’d be grand,” Jack said. “But somehow, I think I’m missing your part of this. I don’t believe in altruism. Especially not from slimy gits like you.”

  “Well, of course not,” Sanford said. “This isn’t the town of money for nothing, Jack. I’ll get what I want out of this, in addition to a warm fuzzy feeling.”

  “And that would be?” Jack said. Sanford shut the book and drummed his fingers on the table.

  “Belial,” he said. “Look, I’ve got every kind of damn thing in here—I have John Wayne Gacy’s paintings, I have Elizabeth Short’s hair, I have a guitar that belonged to Charlie Manson, and I have the dress Sharon Tate was wearing when his freaks cut her open. I’ve got objects of power, I’ve got mage’s grimoires, I’ve got a skull from a sorcerer who was killed by Vlad the Impaler. I have an original edition of Dracula, with blood spells written in the margins. But they’re things, Jack. And as I get older, things get less and less interesting to me.” He gestured at the blank back wall of the cellar. “I want a demon, a living demon, in chains. I want Belial. And if we find what Belial lost, what he fears, I’ll get him and you’ll get your peace.”


  “You’re fucking nuts,” Jack said, before he could stop himself. “You think you can tie Belial down like some kind of pet?”

  “I don’t plan to pet him,” Sanford said, lacing his fingers behind his head. “I plan to study him.”

  “No,” Jack said. “No fucking way. I’ve seen what happens when men try and put one over on a demon, and I think I’ll just back away slowly and leave you to your little catacombs.”

  “You could do that,” Sanford said. “Or you could watch while I let Gator and Parker murder your wife and unborn child, and guarantee that when they’re done, what Belial’s boogeyman did to those families will look like a flower arrangement.” He gave Jack the same slick smile, the let’s-make-a-deal smile. “Gator has certain … proclivities. Your wife is just his type.”

  Jack didn’t realize he’d moved until he was there, hand around Sanford’s neck, slamming the man’s skull into the rock. He hadn’t had a blackout rage in a long while—heroin didn’t lend itself to much except nodding and jittering around looking for your next score. But here he was, slamming Sanford’s head into the rough wall until a smear of blood appeared, and he felt fucking fantastic about it.

  “She’s not my wife,” he told the man. “And you leave her the hell out of this.”

  A fist pounded against the other side of the door. “Sir!” Gator hollered. “You all right in there?”

  Sanford laughed at him, as much as he could with Jack’s fist digging into his windpipe. “Security camera,” he said. “State of the art.”

  “Sir!” Gator shouted. “We’re comin’ in.”

  “You didn’t want her involved, you should have been there when Belial was whispering in her ear,” Sanford hissed. “But you weren’t. You let yourself get beat by something that crawls through the filth at the bottom of Hell and you left her alone. Now what are you going to do about it?”

  The door groaned as it started to open, bolts and hinges protesting. Jack let Sanford go, feeling his heart throbbing and bile working its way up his throat. He hadn’t properly beaten the shit out of somebody in ages, and the wobbly, lightheaded rush had him flying.

  Gator burst in, followed by Parker, and grabbed Jack by the arms, slamming him face first into the desk and scattering Sanford’s papers and Locke’s book like a flight of startled doves. “You piece of shit,” Gator snarled. “I knew I’d have trouble with you.”

  Parker knotted his fingers in Jack’s hair and slammed his forehead against the edge of the desk, short and sharp. Jack saw the flashbulb, and felt the hot, spicy sting of blood in his eyes.

  “That’s enough,” Sanford rasped. He rubbed his neck and fixed his collar. “Just a misunderstanding. Mr. Winter and I have it all worked out now.” He fixed Jack with his pale eyes. “Don’t we?”

  Jack blinked the blood from his eyes. It’d stop, eventually, and leave him looking like he’d been doing battle in the arena. Sanford knew all about him and Pete, and could find him any time he pleased, that was clear. This whole summoning to his broken-down movie-star manse had been a display of might. We know where you live. He could accept Sanford’s insane plan and play along or he could run again, and know that Pete and the kid would never be safe. Crazy or not, Sanford was right—Belial might honor their deal, he might not, but somebody or something would always be just out of the light, waiting to step out and take their stab at the crow-mage and his offspring. It was why mages didn’t get married, didn’t reproduce if they could help it. Nobody would willingly dive into the Black, and nobody would put their kid in the way of demons and monsters.

  But he had. Jack fucking Winter, father-to-be of the fucking year.

  “Yeah, fine,” he told Sanford. “It’s sorted. You’ve got yourself a pet mage.”

  Sanford grinned down at him. “My favorite kind. Get yourself cleaned up and get your baby mama on board. We’ve got work to do.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Sanford’s mansion was high on Sunset Boulevard, beyond even the homes of the movie stars and the techno-billionaires, in the oldest part of Los Angeles, where the old money and the old blood lived. Parker and Gator—Christ, he hadn’t been far off, after all—wrestled him back into the SUV, but Gator didn’t attempt to put a sack over his head again.

  “Sorry I had to rough ya up,” Gator said when they were back in Hollywood, dirty palm trees drooping in the sun. “Mr. Sanford pays us to be on top of things. You understand.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jack said. Gator opened the door and ushered him out onto the sidewalk near a sex shop, a video rental kiosk, and a pay phone covered in obscene graffiti. “Hey, mate,” Jack called as Gator took a seat up front next to the silent Parker. “I ever see you again, I’m going to kick your teeth so far down your throat, you’ll shit molars for a month.”

  “You take care now,” Gator said, giving Jack another rotted-out grin. With his rough-carved face and bushy sideburns, it had the same effect as a grizzly bear in a wig and Elvis Presley sunglasses grinning at you.

  The SUV squealed away from the curb, and Jack sighed. He magicked the pay phone into calling Pete’s mobile, and waited on the corner of Sunset and Vine until the Fury hove into sight. The clerk in the porn shop looked at him, looked at the NO LOITERING sign pasted on the window, examined Jack’s bloody face, and thought better of it, going back to his copy of Variety.

  “Oh, good fucking night,” Pete said when she saw him. Jack smiled, and felt dried blood crackle on his face.

  “You should see the other bloke. Not that I got any shots in, but trust me, he’s worse off—face could stop a fucking clock. Looks like zombie Elvis with a bit of Burt Reynolds after an eight-day coke bender thrown in.”

  “Who in the hell were they?” Pete said. “You leap out of a moving car and when I look back you’re being muscled by two villains straight out of a cheap novel.”

  Jack twisted his spine to and fro, the last kinks from Gator and Parker’s ministrations popping free. “I think that was this city’s version of taking a friendly meeting.” He got down on his hands and knees and examined under the Fury’s bumper. Nothing appeared to be amiss, not that he’d know if it was. Cars made about as much sense as the Starship Enterprise.

  “You lose your spare change?” Pete said.

  Jack brushed the road grit from his hands and popped the Fury’s trunk, getting the gear for changing a tire and thrusting it at Pete. “Lift this beast up. I need to look at the undercarriage.”

  Pete rolled her eyes but she obliged, and Jack shimmied through the broken glass and trash in the gutter to stare at the Fury’s innards. He breathed on his fingertips to give himself a little light, and the blue fire of his ambient talent gathered around his fist.

  In the stark witchfire light, the Fury’s undercarriage looked like the intestines of an iron animal, twisted, rusting, and leaking viscous oil. For all the beauty of its skin, it was a twisted mess on the inside.

  The hex was hidden on the short side of the muffler, carved sharp and straight, silver metal clean against the grime surrounding it. It was a simple enough trick—just a source to bounce a spell off of, an echolocation widget within the Black. As long as the person on the other end was casting, they’d know exactly where the Fury was at any given time.

  Jack slid out from under the Fury and got his kit bag. Pete had a paper mug of tea balanced on the dashboard, and he gestured at it.

  “You mind?”

  “No,” Pete said. “Tasted like shit, anyway.”

  He used the tail of his shirt to grind the chalk fine on the hood of the car, and swept it into the cup. “Got a knife?” he asked Pete. One of her eyebrows went up, just a hair’s breadth.

  “Depends. What are you planning on stabbing?”

  “Myself,” Jack said. Using blood in spells wasn’t exactly the first resort of most mages. Blood tended to complicate things, to attract those that populated the fringe regions of the Black, and to bugger your spell up one side and down the other, until it either summoned a demon or made your li
ver explode. For quick and dirty hex work, though, blood got the job done.

  Pete handed over a small pocket knife, and Jack sliced himself in the familiar path across his palm. You couldn’t cut too deep or too often, or scar tissue would make it impossible to get a good amount when you really needed it. He squeezed the runnels into the cup, and then ripped up the end of his shirt and wrapped it tight around his hand.

  The clerk in the video shop now had a cordless phone in his hand, and was staring at Jack with something close to alarm. “Please,” Jack told him. “I hardly think this is the strangest shit you’ve seen working in this piss-hole.”

  Jack mixed the chalk and blood with his finger, and shimmied back under the Fury. He didn’t have time to look up any specific, proper symbols to block a tracking spell, but half of magic was the willingness to fly by the hair of your arse, and hope that you landed on something soft. If you didn’t have the balls to work spells on the fly, you had no business setting foot in the Black.

  He whispered a few persuasive words to the chalk mixture, and then smeared it liberally over the spell, filling the divots the carvings had left with his own blood. The metal hissed on contact, and a little smoke curled that smelled like the inside of a creamatory furnace filled with hair. The hex wouldn’t hold for long—once whoever was running the spell tried to find them and smacked a brick wall of Jack’s blood magic instead, his trick would cease to be clever. But it bought them a little time, and he hoped it was enough.

  “Right,” he told Pete, standing up. His knees and his skull let him know that a) he was an old man and b) he was an old man who’d just gotten the shit kicked out of him by two large, efficient goons who had a passion for their work. He could deal with that later.

  “Where to?” she said, when Jack slumped into the passenger side of the Fury.

  “Venice,” he said. “Going to see a bloke about a car.”